BIKE: Dedicated bike lanes -- a mistake?

[Fred Meredith]

At 10:53 AM -0600 3/30/05, Mike Dahmus wrote:

>From my experience arguing this very issue (on USENET among other places):
>
>Most of the people who argue that bike lanes are almost always bad 
>tend to be in one of these groups (or combinations thereof):
>
>1. focused with laser-sharp precision on the needs of current 
>(experienced) transportational cyclists (i.e. don't think or care 
>about kids, novices, elderly) - tend to be people who live in areas 
>where cycling just tends to happen by itself and doesn't need 
>promotion or encouragement.
>
>2. inexperienced with suburban cycling conditions (i.e. why would 
>you ever need a bike lane or marked shoulder if roads are laid out 
>in a grid pattern with design speeds of 30 mph) - tend to be 
>disproportionately European, some Amercan adherents among 
>Forsterites mainly in the northeast or midwest United States - areas 
>which haven't seen much growth since the 1960s or so. IE - these are 
>people who never have to ride on roads like Jollyville to get where 
>they want to go.
>
>3. careless about the needs of the city to ensure good traffic flow 
>for all users of a corridor - i.e. sometimes the bike lane exists to 
>increase the likelihood that motorists can maintain some reasonable 
>level of speed, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. IE, these 
>are people who think the city shouldn't care that automobile traffic 
>would often and suddenly be restricted to 10 mph or so on any given 
>street since some motorists don't effectively know how to pass 
>cyclists without the help of a stripe.
>
>They also tend to neglect statistical thinking in their arguments - 
>focusing, for instance, on the average passing distance they get 
>from motorists in wide curb lanes vs bike lanes, rather than looking 
>deeper to the 10th percentile case. See 
>http://www.io.com/~mdahmus/trans/bl-wcl-pd.html for more details.

Mike, I am so glad you have gone to the trouble to do so many 
scientific studies involving Shoal Creek Blvd and similar roadways in 
order that your arguments can be so well grounded in "statistical 
thinking." Otherwise, one might have thought that you were pulling 
some of this stuff right out of your ... in support of what you have 
already chosen to believe.

I'm also glad you have defined a sufficient number of groups so that 
all who disagree with you can be fit into one or another of them. One 
would hate to think that any single set of traffic principles could 
be behind it all.

Exercise care, my friend, when you say such things as below, "Those 
of us in the real world note ..." Unless you have a ready list of 
these "real world" inhabitants, someone might suspect your "us" 
refers to you and the frog in your pocket.

Your friend,

Fred Meredith

>
>Those of us in the real world note that many Shoal Creek corridor 
>users are very young or very old, and that it tends to attract 
>novice cyclists of all ages (me, for instance). It, while 
>theoretically a low-speed corridor, has an apparent design speed of 
>40 mph or so, and serves as a transportation spine which can be an 
>alternate for Burnet Road and Mopac for cyclists (improving 
>conditions for cyclists and drivers if it succeeds in attracting 
>most cyclists away from those two corridors). It also functions as a 
>minor arterial itself (even though bogusly reclassified as a 
>collector) and thus needs to worry about flow of cars in addition to 
>bikes.
>
>- MD
>
>_______________________________________________
>Get on or off this list here:  http://BicycleAustin.info/list


-- 
When in doubt ... ride your bike (or at least write about it).

Fred Meredith
P.O. Box 100 (12702 Lowden Ln for UPS/FedEx)
Manchaca, TX 78652
512/282-1987 (office/home)
512/282-7413 (fax)
512/636-7480 (wireless)
More than you want to know at: http://2merediths.com